Jury gets case of Lomita chef accused of killing and cooking wife

The fate of a Lomita chef accused of killing his wife and cooking her body to destroy the evidence was in the hands of a jury this afternoon.

Jurors began deliberating about 2 p.m. whether to find 49-year-old David Viens guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of his wife, Dawn Viens, who was last seen Oct. 18, 2009.

Jurors can choose to find Viens guilty of a lesser charge, including second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, or acquit him altogether.

Viens' attorney, Fred McCurry, today told jurors that prosecutors have no evidence to convict Viens of murder. He said Viens did not mean to kill his wife when he bound her hands, feet and mouth with duct tape to keep her quiet when he tried to sleep.

"This was accidental," McCurry said. "Just because there was a death does not mean there was a murder."

Prosecutors contend Viens killed his 39-year-old wife and boiled her body in a large pot in the kitchen at Thyme Contemporary Cafe, a restaurant the couple owned on Narbonne Avenue.

He then told friends and family members and even the Daily Breeze that she had left him. Prosecutors said he used her cellphone to send text messages purportedly from her to himself and her friends to pretend that she was alive.

Viens later confessed twice to detectives after he jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes estates cliff on Feb. 23, 2011, as police built their case against him.

"The gruesome and horrific details of what this man did to Dawn Viens came from this man and this man's mouth only," Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil said.

In one confession, Viens told detectives he bound his wife's mouth with duct tape and awakened to find her dead. He put her body in a plastic bag and tossed it into a garbage bin behind the restaurant.

In the second confession, however, Viens revealed how he cooked his wife, pouring fat and other remains into his kitchen's grease trap. The rest were tossed in bags in the trash container.

McCurry urged the panel today to believe the first confession, but not the second, saying it was made while under the influence of painkilling drugs. McCurry said the prosecution produced no evidence that the cooking occurred.

"The prosecution did not prove that what happened Oct. 19 was anything more than an accident," McCurry said. "David Viens is not guilty of murder."

Brazil said no one will ever know what actually happened to Dawn Viens, and suggested she might have been choked to death. All detectives know is what Viens told them he did with her. He destroyed the evidence - his wife's body - so no one would ever know, she said.

"You must return a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree," she said. "Dawn Viens' death was no accident. Hold him responsible for what he did. He tried to manipulate everyone who asked, `Where is Dawn?' Don't let him manipulate you."